Native Tribes in the Transvaal Refuse to Pay Boer Taxes

From the Camperdown Chronicle for
this date in 1882:

Affairs in the Transvaal

The native tribes in the west of the Transvaal refuse to submit to the
taxation imposed upon them by the Boers, and are offering an armed resistance
to the tax collectors. The Boers are mobilising their forces, with a view to
coercing the tribes, and hostilities are imminent.

Not long before this, the Boers had launched their own war of independence
against the British Empire — the First Boer War — with some tax resistance of
their own. A few days after the above paragraph
appeared, the Launceston Examiner published
a somewhat longer
piece that alluded to this:

We are not sufficiently acquainted with the tribal distribution of South
Africa to distinguish the people over whom the Chief Mordsiva, referred to in
our telegrams from Durban, exercises his sway. Whoever they may be they must
evidently be both brave and numerous to have inflicted two crushing defeats
on the forces sent by the Boers to raid its territory. That the Boers can
fight has been too satisfactorily proved when they met and defeated British
troops, and when they in their turn have to submit to the superiority of
their foe these recent opponents must be a powerful body. Recent intelligence
from the Transvaal was to the effect that the native tribes in the west of
that country refused to yield to the taxation imposed on them by the Boers,
and were offering an armed resistance to the tax collectors. Thereupon the
Boers began to mobilise their forces with a view of coercing the tribes and
enforcing the tax. Under these circumstances it was no wonder to find it
added that hostilities were imminent. It can hardly be doubted that the later
information has reference to the proceedings which arose out of the state of
things then disclosed. At the same time there are few who would have been
prepared to hear of the defeat of the Boers who evidently were not inclined
to accept their first reverse as irremediable and therefore again marched
against the recalcitrant tax paying nations. The second defeat cannot fail to
have taught the Boers that they have no insignificant antagonists to deal
with, and may lead them to reconsider the wisdom of trying to collect taxes
from such are unwilling and powerful people. It is scarcely possible that the
Boers will let matters rest at their present stage, and that a further effort
will be made to enforce the collection of the tax, so that we may not have
long to wait to hear that further hostilities have taken place.

I had a devil of a time tracking down information about “Chief Mordsiva.”
Other sources from the period refer to a “Montsima,” or “Montisba Lonza,” or
“Montisba Longa,” or “Montsioa,” or “Montshiwa.” One paper identifies him as
specifically a Zulu chief, and says he was killed in one of the skirmishes in
1882. Another book says he was a chief of the
Baralongs, and was
still alive after the war.

Another chief, Mampuru, was refusing the hut tax around the same time, and
this led to battles sometimes called the “Mapoch War,” but I think that is
distinct from what was being reported above.

After early victories by the resisters, the Boers and their allies beat back
Montshiwa and his allies, and distributed the conquered territories as spoils
among the soldiers. These became
Stellaland and Goshen,
and were, briefly, independent republics.
There is more about this in
The
Transvaal and Bechuanaland by Gavin Brown Clark, but note that the
Boer and English versions of what took place are often very different, and the
Borolong version is rarely seen at all.

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